What could be more traditional than doing a jigsaw over the Xmas/New Year period?! Kite provides an alphabetical one for us here, and also provides me with the opportunity for my 500th blog on this site…
…a personal milestone, stretching back to April 2010, when Geoff/Gaufrid recruited me into the EV blogging team for EV 909, soon followed by a slot on the Saturday Indy, the Grauniad Genius, Cyclops and eventually the Grauniad Saturday Prize puzzles.
The preamble states that:
“Clues are in alphabetical order of their solutions, which should be fitted in the grid jigsaw-wise, however they will go.”
(So far so standard for an alphabetical jigsaw, although unless I am mistaken this isn’t quite true of the two E clues…)
After a quick scan of the grid to get my bearings (28 clues, two Es and two Fs; two 5s’; four 10s; four 7s, radiating out from the centre…) it was down to some cold solving to see how things might pan out.
I soon got the Es as EYED (homophone) and EVEN (névé reversed, or swept up), although I was wary of entering them, as they weren’t in alphabetical order, and I couldn’t initially work out which should be where. Similarly FLEURY and FOXIER for the Fs. Then the Q clue for QUIT read a little oddly, as the ‘going east’ seemed superfluous, until I realised it was a ‘directional’ hint, suggesting that QUIT should go Across.
And in the same vein, after a re-read, I worked out that EVEN should be névé swept ‘up’, and the RUE/street in FLEURY was also ‘climbing’, both suggesting the Down-ness of their solutions.
This left FOXIER to go across, and allowed CHATTERBOX to intersect with the X of FOXIER. In turn, once I had all the 10s, POLYANTHUS had to cross CHATTERBOX and the other two could only cross in one permutation.
And from then on (unless I had slipped up along the way) it wasn’t too hard to slot everything in, as the number of candidates for each entry length gradually diminished, and the increasing number of crossers helped to reverse-solve the last few stragglers:
As Guardian alphabetical jigsaws go, I felt this was at the relatively easier end of the scale, with only JORUMS and POLYANTHUS, plus the variation on Tequila/TEQUILLA, being new/obscure (to me) words. The directional hints were the key, otherwise I think all would have fitted in with 180-deg symmetry down the main diagonal.
All that remains is to thank Kite for closing the 2024 Prize puzzle year out with some style; wish you all a Happy New (Cruciverbal) Year; and cross my fingers that I was right with EYED as the other E!
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| A | AUNT | Guy missing first relation (4)
( |
| B | BARN OWL | Flyer immediately involved in check by lawyer at first (4,3)
BAR (check) + L (Lawyer, at first) around (involving) N_OW (immediately) |
| C | CHATTERBOX | Conservative madman to fight one having a big mouth (10)
C (Conservative) + HATTER (mad man, the Mad Hatter, or hatters generally) + BOX (to fight) |
| D | DYNAMITE | Cook made tiny banger (8)
anag, i.e. cook, of MADE TINY |
| E | EYED | Say, I should get saw (4)
homophone, i.e. say – EYED (saw) could sound like I’D (contraction of I should…?) [not 100% sure of the parsing (or answer) here!] |
| E | EVEN | Snow swept up for plane (4)
NÉVÉ (uncompacted glacial snow) ‘swept up’ to give EVEN [‘swept up’ indicating this is a Down entry] |
| F | FLEURY | Like Lily to rush around climbing Parisian street (6)
FL_Y (rush) around EUR (rue, or Parisian street, ‘climbing’) [‘climbing’ indicating this is a Down entry; ‘like lily’ in the heraldic sense, referring to the fleur-de-lis] |
| F | FOXIER | More cunning animal surrounded by crossfire (6)
F_IER (anag, i.e. cross, of FIRE) around OX (animal) |
| G | GRANDMA | Relative quantity of bread given to mother (7)
GRAND (£1,000, a quantity of ‘bread’, or money) + MA (mother) |
| H | HAPPEN | Female acquires program to go on (6)
H_EN (female) around (acquiring) APP (program) |
| I | IMPORTANCE | Before church, bring in article that shows significance (10)
IMPORT (bring in) + AN (indefinite article) + CE (Church of England) |
| J | JORUMS | Scottish sweetheart with drinks in bowls (6)
JO (Scottish sweetheart) + RUMS (drinks) |
| K | KLAXON | King negligent about producing signal (6)
K (king, chess notation) + LAX (negligent) + ON (about) |
| L | LOIRE | Look at Irish and English river (5)
LO (interjection, look!) + IR (Ireland, or Irish) + E (English) [giving the Loire, a French river!] |
| M | MARKETER | He sells old currency, discourage after first withdrawal (8)
MARK (old currency, of Germany, and other countries) + ( |
| N | NONPOLAR | No plan or criminal not charged (8)
anag, i.e. criminal, of NO PLAN OR |
| O | ORMOLU | Working moor to briefly carry fancy alloy (6)
ORMO (anag, i.e. working, of MOOR) + LU( |
| P | POLYANTHUS | Many workers perhaps gathering to smell short, flowering plant (10)
POLY (prefix, many) + ANT_S (workers, perhaps) around (gathering) HU( |
| Q | QUIT | Going east, who in Marseille and Troy leave? (4)
QUI (who, French, i.e. in Marseille) + T (troy, weight) [‘going east’ indicating an Across entry] |
| R | REGULATE | Right uniform delayed – clothes, for example, made to order (8)
R (right) + U (uniform, Phonetic alphabet) + LATE, all around, or clothing, EG (for example) |
| S | SKEWERED | Where lacking height, desk unbalanced but pinned (8)
subtractive anagram, i.e. unbalanced, of W(H)ERE DESK, lacking H – height |
| T | TEQUILLA | Writer opens drink and another old one (8)
TE_A (drink) around (opened by) QUILL (pen) [TEQUILLA being a variation of TEQUILA – some sources give it as obsolete/archaic, hence ‘old’, but Chambers seems to give it equal billing, albeit with TEQUILA coming first] |
| U | UNIVERSE | College poetry for all (8)
UNI (university, college) + VERSE (poetry) |
| V | VERBOSE | Mistakenly observe it’s windy (7)
anag, i.e. mistaken, of OBSERVE |
| W | WELL THEN | So, tell when introductions are exchanged (4,4)
swapping the introductions, or first letters, of ( |
| X | XENOPHOBIA | A phone box I suspect is not to the liking of foreigners (10)
anag, i.e. suspect, of A PHONE BOX I |
| Y | YAHOO | Crude person‘s browser (5)
double defn. – a YAHOO can be a crude or brutish person, from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; and YAHOO is (was?) an Internet browser… […or is Yahoo more of a search engine and a mail provider?…] |
| Z | ZEALOUS | Keen to analyze a lousy sample (7)
hidden word in, i.e. sample of, ‘analyZE A LOUSy’ |
I like alphabeticals in general and I enjoyed this one. A good number of anagrams helped, and I had a decent number before I started populating the grid.
I had the same parsing as you for EYED. Favourites were ZEALOUS, KLAXON, DYNAMITE and VERBOSE.
Thanks Kite and mc_rapper67
Congratulations on your quincentenary.
Thanks mc_rapper67. I was too slow to recognise the directional hints and took the 50% chance with FOXIER as the across solution. It worked for a while with the SE corner complete but then came to a grinding halt and required a fresh start. Not too taxing but I didn’t mind that at this time of year and I enjoyed it. I’m sure your explanation of EYED is correct and I don’t see any reason for the E clues to be in alphabetical order.
Great MC. Congrats on your 500th.
I made the mistake of thinking the first F would go across, simply because the across clues always come first. It didn’t matter for Es of course. But I’d only filled in three of the 10 letter solutions before I spotted my error. So after a little tippex, I started again. And a most pleasant experience it was. Thank you Kite some very nice clueing – I enjoyed T particularly
I did not realise earlier @1. Congratulations mc_rapper67 on the five hundredth and, moreover, many thanks from an appreciative solver for the entertaining and instructive blogs.
Exactly what Martyn@6 said about the 500th and the blogs. Well done, MC. I look forward to many more.
As for the puzzle, I’m another who likes an alphabetical, and this was as much fun as I expected, although I agree it was on the easier end of the spectrum. What works when it comes to filling the grid depends on what answers you have when you start, and how certain you feel you have to be. I had a false start with only 12 to play with – I had both F’s, but I’d missed the ‘climbing’ aspect of the Parisian street, and didn’t have CHATTERBOX, which would have helped. Then I got ORMOLU and took a punt that its ‘L’ was the start to LOIRE, got away with it, and things flowed on nicely from there.
I did like that the ambiguous pairs – AUNT, QUIT and the Fs and Es – all had directional hints (once I realised this was the case). And the biggest surprise was discovering that TEQUILLA could have a double-L. Very enjoyable. Thanks both.
I have only seen a couple of alphabeticals since I started doing cryptic crosswords and I really enjoy them. Hope there are some more this year.
Lots of lovely clues. Favourites included: CHATTERBOX, JORUMS, POLYANTHUS, TEQUILLA, FLEURY
Thanks Kite and mc_rapper67
Congratulations, mc_rapper67, on your 500th blog. I too always enjoy your entertaining preambles and your thorough solves.
This was a bit of festive fun and I enjoyed fitting the jigsaw together (though I do find with jigsaws that trying to fill in the grid unless I have a “critical mass” of the clues solved can mean I come to grief as I did a bit here, making errors that needed erasing – rather than the use of tippex, Jaydee@5, as I always use a pencil – followed by a re-think).
I actually missed the directional hints so really I was a fail in the end, as I had EVEN and EYED (my LOI) in the wrong places. However I managed to guess the other ones correctly somehow, filling in QUIT as an across clue and AUNT as a down clue, and I was also lucky with the Fs.
Thanks to everyone who has commented so far for listing some of my many favourites, but I have to say that the one I liked most of all was TEQUILLA with the two Ts, not that I’d be game to drink the stuff any more!
Much appreciated, Kite and mc-r!
Yes, congrats mc_rapper67 for the 500 and for this meticulous blog. I followed the same process as you, finding the direction for the otherwise ambiguous dual entries in the clues. I confess, I don’t usually bother with alphabeticals as I don’t have more time to spend on crosswords during public holidays than at other times, but I decided to give this a go and am glad I did. Didn’t notice that the spelling of TEQUILLA was non-standard, as I don’t drink the stuff. Liked VERBOSE, BARN OWL and NONPOLAR. Thanks to Kite and to mc_rapper.
A good puzzle, at the right level, after the previous Saturday’s bizarre one. Each pair of four letters needed direction pointers, as their crossing letters were the same. I missed the climbing pointer in FLEURY, but completed it correctly by good fortune.
Because the grid is symmetrical on the NW-SE diagonal, it should be possible to complete with FLEURY reading across and the other answers mirrored, I think.
At C, we recall Alice’s Mad Hatter nowadays, but ‘mad as a hatter’ was an old saying (as you suggest, mc_rapper) which Lewis Carroll used, but which is now outdated.
I agree with EYED – ‘the cat eyed the mouse’ is almost the same as ‘the cat saw ..’ (I’d say).
Many thanks.
I think with a couple of minor changes I would have enjoyed this a lot more; number the clues instead of alphabetical order and add numbers to the grid to show where to put the answers 🙂
Congrats on the 500
Cheers MC&K
Congratulations on the milestone: you joined the site a year or so after me, but are more productive as I have yet to reach my 400th blog. Agree with your comments about this entertaining puzzle.
I’ve loved alphabetical puzzles since they were first introduced by Araucaria (later renamed ‘Araubeticals’ here by commenter Muck, so I always preface any reference to them with ‘© Muck’. It hasn’t made it to the OED word of the year but is mentioned in Araucaria’s Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galbraith_Graham )
Several setters have had a go at emulating him and so I was interested to see how Kite would make out – and I was very impressed: a great construction, particularly with the directional hints, already mentioned, which I spotted early enough to be of a real help.
Lots of ticks for individual clues, mentioned by others, but I was tickled pink to see JORUMS for the J entry: my first meeting with the word was nearly ten years ago, in my blog of – appropriately – an alphabetical puzzle by one of my favourite setters, Puck – for me, the natural successor to Araucaria: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2015/07/25/guardian-prize-26627-puck/ It gives me a chance to finally set the record straight as to the origin of a different use of ‘jorum’, which, I’m delighted to say, has caught on, after I seconded Marienkaefer’s comment @27.
Many thanks to Kite for a most enjoyable puzzle and to MC for another highly entertaining blog, along with congratulations on the milestone.
sjshart@11. No, it doesn’t work with FLEURY across, that’s what I tried. I got it wrong @ 3, sorry about that.
Not often a fan of this kind f puzzle but surprised myself by completing it. A few quibbles:
TEQUILLA is attested by Chambers so we have to accept it, but that double LL could not possibly occur in a Spanish word without changing the pronunciation and Wikipedia doesn’t even give it as an alternative.
Yahoo to my knowledge has never created a browser, so the clue is just wrong.
I also didn’t understand the Scottish sweetheart. Was Jo March (Little Women) Scottish? How about Jo Nesbo?
Happy New Year mc-r, hearty congrats on your 500th – and thank you for the blog: including the animated grid!
This was a joint effort in our household:
we started filling the grid in exactly the same way as you, and for the same reasons.
The only hiccup was that neither of us was at all sure whether to have POLYANTHUS or POLYANTHAS…. and things stayed vague until JORUMS, a very late solution.
Still, an enjoyable way to spend part of a decidedly damp Twixtmas.
Thank you Kite for the fun.
Thanks Kite and mc_r, and congratulation on 500
poc @ 16:
TEQUILLA is also in the OED, which also cites TEQUELA
If you search ‘Yahoo internet browser’ one of the results is “Yahoo Search – Web Search
The search engine that helps you find exactly what you’re looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web.”
JO is a Scottish term for a sweetheart, not a name in this context.
hth
poc @ 16 – JO is a Scots word for sweetheart – see here: https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/view/id/4456
Edit – overtaken by Simon S.
Poc@16. Jo in JORUM is from a song by Robert Burns. See here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/robertburns/works/john_anderson_my_jo/
Sorry, Eileen! Double clash, and in JORUMS, of all words. It was a particularly pleasant surprise when solving, to realise what the answer to the J-clue was. 🙂
poc@16
For some reason as soon as I read the clue for J with the reference to Scottish Sweetheart the words from the Scottish song popped into my head – its first verse is
John Anderson my jo, John
When we were first acquent
Your locks were like the raven
Your bonie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John
Your locks are like the snaw
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo.
It’s by Robert Burns
Oooops I crossed with some others that know the song and the word jo for sweetheart
Entertaining puzzle, which I found more straightforward than the Araucaria ones of happy memory (and the mind-boggling double alphabetical that Maskarade gave us once), despite not spotting the direction indicators until too late!
Great to see the appearance of JORUMS – a very early solve.
Thanks to Kite and mc_r (500!)
Yes this was good fun. I somehow managed to miss the “climbing” RUE and started off tentatively with FLEURY and FOXIER the wrong way round. Luckily I was doing it in pencil so when I hit a brick wall I just rubbed everything out and started again.
Eileen and sheffield hatter: it was indeed great to see JORUMS for the J. I’ve now actually several times come across the word in a non-crossword context, most recently in Trollope’s Doctor Thorne:
And as he spoke he contrived to swallow a jorum of of scalding tea, containing in measure somewhat near a pint. Mary, not a whit amazed at this feat, merely refilled the jorum…
Many thanks Kite and mc_rapper67.
Appropriately for the New Year, JO appears in the original version of Auld Lang Syne: “For auld lang syne, my jo,/for auld lang syne, /we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,/for auld lang syne.” It’s usually replaced by “dear” these days.
Not only is “Mad as a Hatter” outdated, sjshart@11, but somewhat pejorative – they were not so much mad as poisoned by the mercury used in the manufacturing process in the C19th.
Jaydee @27: And I can confirm from personal experience that sheffield hatter is perfectly sane 🙂
For a holiday weekend I enjoy a double puzzle like this. I like the (modest) thrill of working out the answers before I fill anything in, so can’t rely on crossers for a hint.
I did not get JORUMS, and did not know of JO as a term for sweetheart.
Liked the DYNAMITE anagram clue and MARKETER.
I’ll echo Gervase @28 😉
[Gervase@28 and Eileen@30. That’s very kind of you both!
No mercury was ever involved in the manufacture of straw hats in Luton – it was used for fur felt hats in Stockport, where the football team’s fans also call themselves Hatters.]
Congratulations to mc_rapper67 on your 500th, and thanks for clearly explaining the process that you used. Thanks also to the commenters; I thought including JORUMS might raise a smile. My intention was to make some of the clues quite straightforward to enable grid-filling to start. Maybe for some experienced solvers this meant the process was over too quickly. I’m pleased that this generally did not detract from the enjoyment. Next time, I might be a bit more devilish.
TEQUILLA is in Chambers and Wiktionary, where it is given as archaic, hence the ‘old’. I’m not an expert on browsers, but I did find this, which might let me off the hook: Yahoo has launched a web browser for iPhones, iPads and desktop PCs. Axis aims to improve how people search and browse the web, and according to Yahoo, offers a search experience that allows users to enter their search and see and interact with visual results, without leaving the page they are on.
An enjoyable puzzle. My solving process was not quite as methodical as mc_rapper67’s, I got as many as I could and then started working them in, and it took me a bit to realize how AUNT/QUIT worked even though I’d noticed the redundant “heading east” and hadn’t had any trouble with the E’s.* Appreciated the subtlety there!
I had PILEANTHUS for the P. PILE for “many” is loose but perhaps no more so than some other things we see here. Ah well. That, JORUMS, and TEQUILLA were the LOIs unsurprisingly.
Thanks Kite and thanks mc_rapper67, and congrats on the D!
*Which reminds me of the complaints about Yank’s use of “left” as a reversal indicator in a down clue–as I said on that puzzle, IMO this works for hidden words like Yank’s that can be read left to right in the clue, but not for charades like this, so this was unambiguous.
PS Slight mistake in that the EVEN clue should have been placed before that for EYED (which is correct) – must get a new pair of glasses!
For me, the key to fitting these in lies in the crossing 5- and 6- letter words. There are only 2 5-letter words, which means that the 6-letter word that has an L or Y in the fifth letter must go in the southwest, and the 6-letter word with an E or O in the second letter must go in the northeast.
As noted by others, the directional clues for EVEN and QUIT solve the remaining ambiguities.
Boggles A@15, thanks for correcting me.
We both enjoyed this. I’m grateful to Mr SR as he encouraged me to have a go at these sort of puzzles which used to scare me off.
I spotted JO from the Burns poem which I did for O Level Eng. Lit. (yes, I’m that old).
Many thanks, Kite, for the fun and for your posts here. Always interesting to hear from a setter.
Many congratulations, mc_rapper67, on your 500 blog! An amazing achievement particularly since you obviously take a lot of time and trouble over them including lots of background info and humour. They are very much appreciated.
And a Happy New Year to all setters, bloggers and contributors!
Late to the party but I want to add my thanks to Kite for this very enjoyable alphabetical jigsaw cryptic and to mc_rapper for your most entertaining blog. And congrats to mc on your 500th blog.
This puzzle took me an afternoon to solve but it was well worth the effort!
I missed the directional instructions with EVEN, EYED, AUNT and QUIT but got them right anyway. NEVE and FLEURY were new words for me – solved from wordplay.
But I’d seen JORUMS before on this site, maybe from an blog by Eileen, so was pleased to be able to use it. And I did know JO, having a copy of the Burns song on CD.
TEQUILLA and BARN OWL held out till the end and I liked them both, as well as JORUMS, FLEURY (for the climbing rue) and CHATTERBOX.
Thanks both.
matt w@33 Another PILEANTHUS here. I didn’t notice the directional hints, just assumed placement of the 4-letter clues wasn’t relevant given the lack of crucial crossers. oh well. Was unsure of ORMULU, since I know it more as the item than the alloy, and didn’t think of “lug” for carry.
As long-time G&S chorus members, we’ve sung the word jorum in THE SORCERER in the scene were the love potion is introduced into the pot of tea the Vicar makes. “None so cunning as he at brewing a jorum of tea.”
And, as Scrabble players, we’ve used JO many times.
Thanks Kite, and thanks and congrats to MC on your milestone! This puzzle has a special appeal for me since its format is one used periodically by the long-time setter for Harper’s — where I first got hooked on cryptics back in the late 70s — the American theater producer and director Richard Maltby Jr. He terms them “abecedarian jigsaws”. Great fun, and I hope to see more of these, along with barred crosswords, on the G.
Many thanks to Kite for an inter-festivities delight with a fine blog by mc_rapper67.
For ‘jorums’, I vaguely remembered the Burns poem for Jo and the G&S song ‘Now for the banquet we press’ from The Sorcerer.
Unfortunately, our triumph of ‘compleation’ was marred by placing ‘even’ and ‘eyed’ incorrectly thinking that ‘even’ indicated ‘level’, indicating it should go ‘across’.
Thanks for the blog MC , and speaking of recruitment I got the pleasure of taking on your Saturday Indy slot on this site.
Congratulations on a huge innings, I haven’t even hit 10% of your total yet!
I got CHATTERBOX, FOXIER, and YAHOO from the wordplay, took a punt on their Xs crossing and there only being one 5 letter answer with H as the middle letter. There was only one place in the grid to fit this and I slowly worked out the rest from there.
Thanks to Kite and mc_rapper67
Thanks to all who pointed out the meaning of JO, which I was unaware of.
Simon S@18: a search engine is not a browser.
Re TEQUILLA (or TEQUELA): yes, I know it’s in dictionaries. I was merely pointing out that it doesn’t make sense as a Spanish word. That doesn’t disqualify it as a crossword answer.
The word derives from the Mexican state of Tequila (sic), the derivation of which may be of native origin but even if so would not have been written in the Latin alphabet before the Spanish adopted it.
Re Yahoo. It started as a browser – rivalling Mosaic (which became Netscape). The reason it tanked was that it was a fully hierarchical system you had to branch down from say ‘tourism’ to ‘france’ to ‘the ardennes’ to ‘hiking in the ardennes’ etc. So many clicks to get there. Netscape and Alta Vista changed the landscape (suitable for a ‘scape’ and a ‘vista’).
Thanks for all the blogs. Well done. I only found out about this one yesterday and finished it with my breakfast coffee a few minutes ago. Great fun and the directional indicators helped immensely.
Thanks for all the comments and feedback, and kind words on my 500/D/quincentennial milestone! Onwards and upwards…
I forgot to mention that I would be out golfing yesterday morning (-2, but unfortunately that was the temperature, not my final score!) and then out at a family do all afternoon.
Looks like there wasn’t too much controversy here – POLYANTHUS vs PILEANTHUS; whether Yahoo is a ‘browser’ or not; TEQUILA vs TEQUILLA (tequi-y-a?). But no-one getting particularly exercised by any of these.
And thanks to Kite for popping in at #32 with some background to the puzzle – bring on the devilishness next time! – and at #34 to confirm the ‘juxtaposition’ of the two E clues…
Enjoyed Kite’s well constructed puzzle. Like other bloggers, I thought that the directional indicators were clear. I enjoyed the logical process of fitting other clues. I failed to explain TEQUILLA, so had to wait for Mc_rapper’s explanation, checked just now after a day skiing. Well done for the 500!
Neve, usually with an accent I think, is a compacted form of snow, formed after freeze-thaw cycles, which gives a pleasing security with ice-axe or crampons.